It was with some reservation I boarded the plane after booster for most things you can catch in India and a full medical kit for the crew which took up a large part of my suitcase. India had never been on my bucket list of places to go to and yet I found myself sitting on the tarmac at Sydney airport bound for Singapore and then onto Dehli. My memories of Delhi were hazy..hot, smelly, plenty of fumes and spending a few hours in the middle of the night on the way to London.
I was totally suprised when I landed at the new Dehli airport and thought I had not left Singapore! It was amazing, brand new, stylish and very comopolitan..so we were off to a good start. This was also bittr sweet as it was the last shoot in what has been an amazing life expereince for me - directing a climate change series travelling to some of the most remote places in the world. And less we forget many firsts! My first camping experience in -15C, learning to pee without a toilet in the icesheets in Greenland surrounded by 12 packs of Huskies, dogsleds and Inuit hunters, hiking deep into the Amazon Rainforest and going to Antarctica - my most favourite place in the world!
In India we had two crews - a high altitude team for the 5,000 metres and a low altitide team for the remainder of the shoot - this was my team and we headed to the low foothills of the Himalayas whee our Indian adventure started. Rishekash was full of colour, extremely hard to film in, bustling with people, and COWS! Holy shit was everywhere and you needed to keep a watchful eye for the path of the cows - they rule the walkway! We attended a specila candle ceremony on the river and then an audience with one of the holy swamies - this was the begnning of many highlights and each day I think I began to understand this place of great diversity, colour and culture. We travelled further to Hardiwar where we explored the lack of water, changing Asian Monsoon that is arriving later, and delivering more extreme weather patterns, destroying crops, bring flashfloods and hardship to the rural people.
We met with Prof Ramanath and Pof Rehman, but distinguished scientists and explored the growing Brown Cloud, the issues of water security, rising tempertures affecting their basic group production and how the great Basmarti Rice has lost its smell due to climate change.
It is a complicate story in India, their growing population is putting enormous stresses in their energy consumption and prodcution which pushes their use and production of greenhouse gases. Their growing polupation requires greater food crops and this requires consitant water supply. Wiater shortage is a major issue and their are some concerns about water wars in the future as the Himalaya glaciers continue to melt and at rates much faster than current climate models.
Varanassi was the most challenging place we went to - both personally and from a film production perspective. It is a place most peole come to die or to hold funerals along the rives edge. Over 51000 funerals are held along the great Ganges river each year, so with respect we filmed ealry in the morning at 5am before the processions began. Our ground co ordinators were amazing, and everyone we met or filmed were so passionate to tell the world about the tipping points of India climate system, and how concerned they were for their future and the future of India. Adaptation is something being taken very seriously by many of the scientists and government. Already they are trialing solar energy in rulal villagers which will make a huge difference for cooking and lighing at night time.
One of the highlights of the expedition was meeting Dr Prachuri head of the IPCC report in Dehli. He reiterated that we have the technology and the adptitude to change, but we only have 2 years left to cap our CO2 emissions. 2015 is the D date with our earth destiny and we are hurtliung towards what many scientists we met called the BIG TURN IN THE BEND, where we have to make a turn in the river, but at the rate we are speeding towards it and taking no notice to slow down we will overshoot our emmissions for this century and with that we will commit the planet to irreversble change - and this affect our future generations, our children and their families and so on.. so its pretty sobering to have spent the last 16 months travelling to all the tipping points of our climate system and to personally witness the tremendous changes taking place and how close we are to really tipping the balance. I believe to make THE BIG CHANGE WE NEED TO MAKE it is up to each and everyone of us to do something, to influence change in a small or big way, its all about the collective consciouness of change for a earth's future and for ours. I am constanlty reminded that we live in a planet in the middle of a void, empty lifeless galaxy - this planet our EARTH is only habitable because of our complex climate system and yet we choose to destroy the one thing that keeps our planet stable and has doen for the last 55 million years. In no period over the last 55 million years has the planet warmed up at such an accelerated rate.
In the last 55 million years we had a 2 degree rise iver 2,000 years. Now we will see in this century alone a temperate rise of 3-4 degrees in just 100 years - much of our bio diversity in our tropcial rainforests will not be able to adpat and we stand to loose ipto 60% of all bio diversity on the planet alone.
So is has been a priveledge to share this fantastic adventure with you - I am going to put up a selection of expedition photos over the next few weeks and will let you know when the series is going to go to air in various countries around the world.
Thanks to all - Liz ( Adventure Mum!) x
I was totally suprised when I landed at the new Dehli airport and thought I had not left Singapore! It was amazing, brand new, stylish and very comopolitan..so we were off to a good start. This was also bittr sweet as it was the last shoot in what has been an amazing life expereince for me - directing a climate change series travelling to some of the most remote places in the world. And less we forget many firsts! My first camping experience in -15C, learning to pee without a toilet in the icesheets in Greenland surrounded by 12 packs of Huskies, dogsleds and Inuit hunters, hiking deep into the Amazon Rainforest and going to Antarctica - my most favourite place in the world!
In India we had two crews - a high altitude team for the 5,000 metres and a low altitide team for the remainder of the shoot - this was my team and we headed to the low foothills of the Himalayas whee our Indian adventure started. Rishekash was full of colour, extremely hard to film in, bustling with people, and COWS! Holy shit was everywhere and you needed to keep a watchful eye for the path of the cows - they rule the walkway! We attended a specila candle ceremony on the river and then an audience with one of the holy swamies - this was the begnning of many highlights and each day I think I began to understand this place of great diversity, colour and culture. We travelled further to Hardiwar where we explored the lack of water, changing Asian Monsoon that is arriving later, and delivering more extreme weather patterns, destroying crops, bring flashfloods and hardship to the rural people.
We met with Prof Ramanath and Pof Rehman, but distinguished scientists and explored the growing Brown Cloud, the issues of water security, rising tempertures affecting their basic group production and how the great Basmarti Rice has lost its smell due to climate change.
It is a complicate story in India, their growing population is putting enormous stresses in their energy consumption and prodcution which pushes their use and production of greenhouse gases. Their growing polupation requires greater food crops and this requires consitant water supply. Wiater shortage is a major issue and their are some concerns about water wars in the future as the Himalaya glaciers continue to melt and at rates much faster than current climate models.
Varanassi was the most challenging place we went to - both personally and from a film production perspective. It is a place most peole come to die or to hold funerals along the rives edge. Over 51000 funerals are held along the great Ganges river each year, so with respect we filmed ealry in the morning at 5am before the processions began. Our ground co ordinators were amazing, and everyone we met or filmed were so passionate to tell the world about the tipping points of India climate system, and how concerned they were for their future and the future of India. Adaptation is something being taken very seriously by many of the scientists and government. Already they are trialing solar energy in rulal villagers which will make a huge difference for cooking and lighing at night time.
One of the highlights of the expedition was meeting Dr Prachuri head of the IPCC report in Dehli. He reiterated that we have the technology and the adptitude to change, but we only have 2 years left to cap our CO2 emissions. 2015 is the D date with our earth destiny and we are hurtliung towards what many scientists we met called the BIG TURN IN THE BEND, where we have to make a turn in the river, but at the rate we are speeding towards it and taking no notice to slow down we will overshoot our emmissions for this century and with that we will commit the planet to irreversble change - and this affect our future generations, our children and their families and so on.. so its pretty sobering to have spent the last 16 months travelling to all the tipping points of our climate system and to personally witness the tremendous changes taking place and how close we are to really tipping the balance. I believe to make THE BIG CHANGE WE NEED TO MAKE it is up to each and everyone of us to do something, to influence change in a small or big way, its all about the collective consciouness of change for a earth's future and for ours. I am constanlty reminded that we live in a planet in the middle of a void, empty lifeless galaxy - this planet our EARTH is only habitable because of our complex climate system and yet we choose to destroy the one thing that keeps our planet stable and has doen for the last 55 million years. In no period over the last 55 million years has the planet warmed up at such an accelerated rate.
In the last 55 million years we had a 2 degree rise iver 2,000 years. Now we will see in this century alone a temperate rise of 3-4 degrees in just 100 years - much of our bio diversity in our tropcial rainforests will not be able to adpat and we stand to loose ipto 60% of all bio diversity on the planet alone.
So is has been a priveledge to share this fantastic adventure with you - I am going to put up a selection of expedition photos over the next few weeks and will let you know when the series is going to go to air in various countries around the world.
Thanks to all - Liz ( Adventure Mum!) x
